What Toronto can learn about transit from London’s deep dig
Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ransit-from-londons-deep-dig/article22072872/
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Critics call John Tory’s SmartTrack proposal ill-conceived, dubbing it a grandiose scheme unlikely to get off the ground. But much the same was once said of Crossrail, the £15-billion ($27-billion) expansion of London’s rail network, which crews have nearly finished tunnelling.
- Despite the looming demand, Crossrail languished on the drawing board for a generation. Even after its approval in 2008, it was by no means certain to go ahead. Now, five years after work began, it enjoys broad support. What happened? The ways it is being financed, justified and promoted all offer lessons that could prove valuable not only to Toronto but to other Canadian cities, including Vancouver as it pushes for the Broadway SkyTrain extension.
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Have business chip in: Almost one-third of Crossrail’s cost will be covered by London businesses, without whose contribution the project likely would not have gone ahead. London First, a lobby group representing the city’s biggest corporations, played a key role. --- David Leam, the group’s infrastructure director, says London First was born in 1992 when business was concerned about the city’s lack of long-term planning. It seized upon Crossrail, recognizing it was “clearly a good project, which would bring economic benefits.” Mr. Leam says that business realized that, if a private-sector contribution was necessary, “that was a price worth paying.”
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Think bigger than transit: A vital part of Crossrail’s pitch is that the project is about economic regeneration, not just moving people, says Ms. Dedring. And key to that is how it taps into East London, traditionally a less developed part of the city. --- “London is historically going through this really fundamental structural reshifting, rebalancing between east and west, and Crossrail fits that narrative obviously very well,” says Michael Hebbert, a professor of town planning at University College London, who chaired the review process for Crossrail’s design. “Part of this is to enable London to grow its capacity without growing physically.”
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Sell the sizzle: Below Soho Square, southwest of where Oxford Street meets Tottenham Court Road, there’s a tunnel that could fit a three-storey house. The huge space for the platform area of a key new Crossrail station began with a pass of a tunnel-boring machine (TBM) before being dug out to its current size. The scale gives the site a sense of grandeur, even drama. Down here, the bustle of London – whose narrow streets and historic buildings posed the sort of logistical headaches that Andy Alder, project manager of western tunnels for Crossrail, cites as the biggest challenge to construction work – feels far away.
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Be specific about benefits: Walk past a Crossrail site, and the hoarding will make a very granular pitch for how the project will help Londoners. Among the touted benefits: bringing 1.5 million people within 45 minutes of “all the best of London.” There will be 57,000 new homes thanks to neighbourhood regeneration around stations. The project is pushing ahead by 100 metres every week and, when done, passengers will be able to get across the city in 12 minutes.
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But manage expectations: London’s Commissioner of Transport, Sir Peter Hendy, raised eyebrows last year when he said that Crossrail would be full immediately upon opening. He was exaggerating a bit, but the comment makes simple sense: New transportation options quickly attract new passengers. And it also made clear the fact that the project is no silver bullet. --- “It’s carrying 200,000 an hour in the peak. Now, that’s a huge number, but because the city’s growing, it’ll fill in pretty quickly,” Ms. Dedring says. “That’s not going to solve the problem of capacity in the peaks in London for the next 100 years. So it’s not transformational in that sense. But that isn’t what Crossrail is trying to do, alone. That is part of its objective.”
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